1. Jordan in White by J. H. Hennessy. The portrait—one of the artist’s last before she died, the brochure noted—wasn’t portable, unlike the other most expensive sweetmetals in the collection, but it didn’t matter. It was a stunner of a piece of art, featuring an intense-eyed child posed in a simple white slip, her kinky hair piled upon her head. And it was incredibly potent. Anyone would be happy to display it prominently in their home to animate an entire dreamt family.
Jordan stood looking at Jordan in White for a very long time.
She looked first at the girl, at Jordan, and then she looked at the signature, J. H. Hennessy, and then back at the girl again. Mother painting daughter.
Although Jordan was supposed to be a direct copy of Hennessy, she’d never thought of J. H. Hennessy as her mother. For a while she’d thought this was because she hadn’t known Jay like Hennessy had. After all, Jordan had only come into being just after Jay died. But slowly she realized that shouldn’t matter; Jordan had all of Hennessy’s other early memories. Hennessy’s mother should have been as fresh as everything else.
But this painting underlined the unspoken truth. Jordan was missing memories. The Hennessy in the portrait looked wary, skittish, unlike the Hennessy Jordan had always known, but it was obviously her, back when she had been both Jordan and Hennessy. But Jordan had no memory of sitting for the painting, no memory of it existing at all.
This was something that had been kept from her.
Jordan felt very strange.
She didn’t know if this was because she was looking at some of her history, or because it was a sweetmetal, or because she was trying to figure out if Boudicca was playing a mind game with her.
She’d been staring at it too long; the guards were antsy. They were thinking about Project Bullets.
Jordan pointed finger guns at them before turning to Fisher. “How are the sweetmetals made?”
“I don’t understand the question,” Fisher said.
“Who makes these things into sweetmetals?”
“Isn’t that the same question?”
“This painting. Those spoons. Why do they do what they do? They are not just a painting, a spoon, they do other things, that’s why I’m here, don’t leave me feeling I’m talking to myself, mate— Was it put into them? Were they like that from the get?” When she saw Fisher’s exasperated face, Jordan answered her own question. “You don’t know how the sausage is made.”
Fisher said, “You’re a strange person.”
Without any hostility, Jordan went on. “All right, then. What’ll these set me back? I assume the price isn’t money. Because money’s too cheap.”
Fisher shrugged. With the sound of someone repeating someone else’s words, she said, “Our clientele includes those to whom money is no object.”
“Let me have a guess,” Jordan said. “I do whatever you want for the rest of time, and I get one of these.” She read Fisher’s face. “I get to borrow one of these. And you write me up a little contract on your phone.”
Fisher shrugged again.
Jordan studied her, trying to read her. “Is that why you’re here? For one of these, something like one of these?”
“Nah, some of us choose it.”
“Ah. I reckon this is the part where you tell me I should make a decision soon, ’cause they’re flying out the door each place they go.”
Fisher shrugged yet again. “You make my job easy.”
She watched Jordan very carefully as Jordan walked back along the sweetmetals, feeling everything in her shouting to stay close to them. Probably Fisher thought Jordan was trying to choose which one she’d ask for. Really, Jordan was trying to tell what they had in common. They were all art. Or at least, they were all made by a human. Crafted by a human.
Their secret hummed inside her.
“I was supposed to ask you,” Fisher said as she paused at the end of the sweetmetals, “if you were still in touch with Ronan Lynch.”
Jordan’s heart sailed right up and out of the wine cellar and into the sky.
Right.
She should have known it was coming. Boudicca thought there was just one Jordan Hennessy; somehow she’d managed to forget that. Now it seemed like she had two choices. Make up a reason why she was no longer aware of Ronan’s whereabouts after such a dramatic exit or let loose a story about her being a twin with no knowledge of him at all. It was hard to tell on the fly which was a more dangerous truth.
Or, maybe—
“Do I look like a phone to you?” Jordan asked.
“A phone?”
“If you want to get in touch with someone, that’s the way to do it. A phone, that’s the ticket. I am not a phone. I’m not some white boy’s answering service. Tell me, Fisher, do you like it when people act like you’re the direct line to ol’ Barb?”
This question landed with glorious effect. Fisher’s mouth worked unpleasantly. The subject of Ronan was abandoned.
“Who do I call if I’m interested in these?” Jordan asked. “With follow-up questions. You?”
Fisher looked confused. “You don’t like them?”
“They’re neat.” Please, please, Jordan’s body said.
“Most people would do anything to have one.”
Jordan grinned. “I’m a strange person.”
If Fisher remembered saying it earlier, she didn’t show it. Instead, she said, “Better make up your mind soon. These days, lots of people are trying to stay awake.”
I hate Philadelphia. I hate its quaint little streets,” Hennessy said. “I hate Pittsburgh. I hate its gleaming broad rivers. I hate everything between those two places. I-70, how she twists, how she turns, she rises, she falls like an empire. Hate it. Those barns, the Amish ones, you see them in calendars? Liquid loathing. Truck stops? Yes, let’s talk about truck stops, yes. Hate them, too. I hate the cows. Black cows, black-and-white cows, even those brown ones with eyelashes longer than mine. I think I hate them more because of it. Oh. Right, how about this: The song ‘Allentown.’ Breaks me in a rash. I’ve got one now thinking about it.”
By Ronan’s estimation, Hennessy had been listing all the ways she hated Pennsylvania for thirteen miles’ worth of interstate. Not her longest monologue, but perhaps one of her most pointed. There was something kind of hypnotic and satisfying to a proper Hennessy monologue. She had that clipped but sloppy British accent that made everything sound funnier, more performative. And she had a ceaseless push and pull to the way she threw the words together that was kind of like music.
“I hate the historic downtowns with their plaques and their parallel parking. I hate the pastel suburbs with their antilock brakes and their sprinkler systems. I hate the way the state is spelled. Uhllllllvania. It rhymes with ‘pain yeah!’ When I say it out loud, I can feel how my mouth ends on a vomit shape. I hate the way they call places ‘townships.’ Are they towns? Are they ships? Am I at land? Or at sea? I’m adrift and the anchor is my motherfucking keystone of a heart. Why is it abbreviated TWP? Twip? Twip? Shouldn’t it be the SS Allegheny? That’s a pun. It’s a town. And a ship.”
Ronan didn’t answer. He just looked out the window at the cold, fine rain bleaching the landscape of color and tried not to think about his brothers driving in Boston.